Monitoring the outside of your property is as important to home security as keeping an eye on the inside, and a number of manufacturers are introducing DIY outdoor cameras to fill that need. The Vimtag B1 Waterproof Cloud IP Camera is one of the best we’ve seen, offering a simple, intuitive way to keep tabs on what’s going on in your front (or back, or side) yard, and its presence could help you deter an intruder before they break in.

The B1 is a bullet-style camera, similar to the CCTV cameras you often see mounted outside commercial buildings. It features an aluminum-alloy body that’s designed to withstand the elements—it’s waterproof and has an operating temperature of 14- to 131 degrees F. A pigtail of three cables extends from the bottom of the preattached stand, offering an ethernet port, power port, and reset button. Attached to the side is a 3Dbi antenna for Wi-Fi connectivity.

Samsung’s SmartCam HD Plus was one of the first DIY security camera’s we reviewed that improved upon the Dropcam blueprint. Now Samsung has added the SmartCam PT ($229) to its lineup. This pan-and-tilt model lets you see into the blind spots stationary home security cameras can’t reach, and it comes with a few well-thought-out features that set it apart from its many competitors.

If you’re of a certain age, the SmartCam PT (available at Amazon) will likely evoke the old Apollo command modules: a truncated cone that comes to a blunt point. The hollowed out center holds the camera itself, and the black upper part of the cone swivels on its gray base. Set on a shelf, it doubles as an interesting knick-knack, but you can also secure it to a supplied bracket with thumbscrew and mount to a wall.

This review doesn’t touch the gaming side of the Xbox One S. If that’s what interests you, this review discusses some of that. We used use the same 2TB model for this evaluation, but the less-expensive 500GB model will do just as well if you plan to use the machine as an Ultra HD Blu-ray player, media renderer, and 4K video streamer.

Sadly, the Xbox One S isn’t the best Ultra HD Blu-ray player because it currently doesn’t send Blu-ray’s high-definition audio bitstreams (Dolby TrueHD or DTS HD Master Audio) over HDMI. For that reason, the Xbox One S also cannot support Dolby Atmos or DTS:X. What it can do is decode that data and send multi-channel PCM (pulse code modulation) audio out, or it can send the older, lower-resolution Dolby Digital or DTS Digital Surround bitstreams (over either HDMI or an optical digital cable).

When I reviewed the Amazon Echo 13 months ago, I predicted that people would want one in every room. The Echo can control your home’s lighting, play music, estimate your commute time, operate a timer, answer trivia questions, read books and news bulletins to you, tell you which movies are at your local theater, and so much more. You can order a pizza from Dominoes, a ride from Uber, or virtually anything from Amazon. You’d want one in every room so you didn’t need to walk to the room it was in to use it, or yell “Alexa!” from across the house to get its attention. I’m sure Amazon loved my idea, but it was never going to happen on a broad scale at $180 a pop.

We get pitched on a lot of new products and technologies here at TechHive. Every now and then, something great pops up. But most of the better mousetraps we see are over-hyped and/or relatively trivial. You might say we’ve become a bit jaded about it.

So when I pulled my colleagues aside and asked them to take a look at Samsung’s UN65KS9800 65-inch, 4K UHD smart TV with HDR support, I heard a lot of muttering along the lines of "4K UHD? HDR? So what? <yawn> $3500? No way I’m paying that for a TV! I’m really busy--can we do this later?"

But when I showed them the stunning vista of the KS9800 displaying 2160p HDR demos, the muttering was replaced by exclamations of "Oh, my." "Wow!" "Whoa!." And at least one “That’s freakin’ awesome!”

What’s the best way to celebrate your 50th year of existence? High-end audio brand Bowers & Wilkins is marking the milestone with the launch of an all-new set of flagship headphones: The P9 Signature.

Joining the celebration could put a hefty dent in your bank account, however; these exceptional cans are priced at 900 bucks. Affordable being a relative term, there’s no disputing that the P9 Signature beautifully embodies B&W’s 50-year legacy.

These headphones are luxuriously wrapped in supple leather produced by the Italian tannery ScaBrenta. The leather surrounding the interior side of the ear cups and the underside of the headband is soft, supple, and incredibly comfortable against your body. The leather used on the other side of the ear cups and the top of the headband, however, is what’s known as Saffiano leather, the result of a machine-stamping process that hardens the material and leaves a distinctive crosshatching to make it more resistant to scuffs and scratches. You could think of Saffiano leather as a dragon’s protective scales, and the leather that touches your body as the dragon’s soft underbelly.

Wi-Fi security camera/porch light mash-ups like the Netatmo Presence make a whole lot of sense. The best place to locate an outdoor security camera is near an exterior door, and exterior doors nearly always have porch lights nearby. That instantly eliminates the biggest hassle with installing an outdoor security camera: The electrical wiring needed to power the camera is already in place.

Since most burglars break into homes through entry doors, that’s also an ideal location to mount a camera. It’s one of the reasons I like the Kuna Security Camera & Smart Light I reviewed last June. There’s also one significant drawback to this approach, however; porch lights are almost always controlled by a wall switch. Turn off the switch and you shut down your security camera until you flip the switch again. I’m no electrician, so my low-tech solution has been to remove the switch’s cover plate and tape a strip of transparent packing tape over it so that it couldn’t be toggled.

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Security CamerasConnected HomeHome TechTP-Link Smart Wi-Fi LED Bulb LB120 review: This would be a great bulb if it wasn’t so dim Mon, 31 Oct 2016 03:00:00 -0700Christopher NullChristopher Null

Like the LIFX White 800, the TP-Link LB120 connects to your network not through a ZigBee bridge but directly, through Wi-Fi. And as with the LIFX, this adds significant size and heft to the bulb, though it is much lighter (less than half the weight) than the LIFX 800 and it retains a largely traditional bulb design.

The TP-Link LB120 is designed to work with the TP-Link infrastructure of smart switches, smart plugs, and Wi-Fi gear, but it’s compatible with any Wi-Fi product. It is also certified to work with Amazon’s Alexa digital assistant. You set up and manage the LB120 through TP-Link’s Kasa management app, which has separate sections for managing all of its smart components.

The Sengled Element Touch is a ZigBee-compatible bulb with a few modestly compelling bells and whistles. The big one has nothing to do with “smart” anything at all; in fact, it’s rather old-school-dumb, taking the form of a small button built in to the bulb itself. Press that button once and the bulb dims to 75-percent brightness. Press again and it dims to 50-, then 25 percent, then off. Press it again and you’re back to full strength. Yes, with the Element Touch there are never more than four button presses between you and turning out a light.

The bulb isn’t manually tunable, but it does change temperature based on that brightness. At 100-percent brightness, the bulb emits a cool-to-neutral 3500K. This steps down as the bulb is dimmed until you hit 25 percent, where temperature hits a warm 2700K. This effect is automatic and takes place whether you dim the bulb through the switch or through your ZigBee control app.

Let’s start by looking at the specs. At 890 lumens max, it’s the brightest bulb in this roundup. As with the LIFX Color 1000, however, most of that light is directed upward rather than to the sides of the bulb. That means that when you compare it to the 1055 lumens of the Color 1000, it actually seems relatively dim.

The LIFX White 800 has the same cylindrical shape and almost the same dimensions and weight as its color progenitor, which makes it still a bit large, though reasonably small enough to fit comfortably into most fixtures. Again, as with other LIFX products, it connects to your network directly via Wi-Fi, which means no hubs are needed to tie the bulb into your network and enable its control-from-anywhere features, something that Bluetooth bulbs just can’t do.

The Philips Hue White Ambiance is a doppelganger for its color bulb. In fact, the bulbs are identical in appearance, with the exception of fine print written on the heat sink indicating these bulbs are white only. (Even maximum brightness, at 800 lumens, is the same.) If you already own a Philips Hue Bridge, you can buy just the bulbs—you don’t need a second bridge unless you’re deploying more than 50 bulbs.

The starter kit includes two Hue White Ambiance bulbs, a Wi-Fi bridge, and a wireless dimmer switch that can be used like a portable remote or mounted to the wall. Additional A19 white bulbs cost $30 each. Philips White Ambiance bulbs are also available in the GU10 and BR30 form factors for $30 each.

Cree offers a ZigBee lighting solution, but only part of it. Cree makes the bulbs, but it doesn’t make the hub or the software to control it. For that, you’ll need a third-party product, either Wink, SmartThings, WeMo, or another certified ZigBee bridge.

This is both good news and bad. If you already have a ZigBee smart-home setup and want to add lighting to it, a solution like this makes a lot of sense. The bulbs are cheaper (at $15, they’re half the price of higher-end units), and since you will already have the hardware installed and running, adding these bulbs to your network is seamless. Screwing in a few bulbs and figuring out how to set dimmers and timers should require no real effort or learning curve.

With its new C by GE hardware, GE takes a different approach to the smart bulb, offering two different models that are designed for different types of rooms. Both are Bluetooth bulbs, so no hub is required to get up and running, and you can control both through a single app.

C-Life is a dimmable “living room” bulb, but it’s not color tunable. It’s preset to 2700K, a nicely warm, incandescent shade of light. At about $15 a bulb, it’s an affordable way to experiment with smart lighting technology. The second bulb is called C-Sleep, and while it looks nearly identical to C-Life, it offers some basic tuning options, with three different color temperature settings. In the morning, the cold light (about 7000K) is designed to energize. A daytime setting offers a relatively neutral, fluorescent-like hue, and in the evening hours, the light warms up further, aiding relaxation and preparing the user for bed. All of this is managed with the C by GE app, which features a configurable “Follow the Sun” system that lets the user set specific times at which the bulbs switch from one mode to the next.

You can’t program Philips latest LED light bulb, but you can easily change the color it produces—and you won’t even need to whip out your smartphone. The SceneSwitch is a 60-watt-equivalent, white-only LED bulb that’s capable of producing three color temperatures at the flip of a switch: Turn the bulb on and you get 800 lumens of moderately soft 2700K light. Turn it off, then on again, and the bulb delivers 800 lumens but at a quite cold 5000K color temperature. Turn it off and on a third time and the bulb dims to 80 lumens of very warm 2200K light.

The SceneSwitch doesn’t work with a smartphone app, but as anyone who’s spent a long time fiddling with smart lighting knows, sometimes these apps are overkill. Once in a while you just want to flip a switch and have the lights come on.

Smart color light bulbs—LED-based bulbs that can be controlled by a smartphone and “tuned” to emit any hue in the rainbow—are no longer a new idea. What is new is how far this technology has come since its advent just a few years ago.

Color LED bulbs aren’t quite a commodity yet, but they are getting close to maturity as far as the market goes. Today’s bulbs are more compact, much brighter, have better color representation, and, for the most part, feature control apps that do more than ever, and are easier to set up. Prices have also come down, with some no-name color-tunable bulbs now available for less than $10 each. (Buyer beware: You get what you pay for.)

TP-Link has expanded its smart bulb offerings, which previously included only a series of dimmable and tunable white LED bulbs. The TP-Link LB130 is fully color-enabled, and like its white-only little brother, the LB120, it’s fully manageable via your Wi-Fi network. TP-Link is now one of only two vendors of significance producing Wi-Fi-connected, color-tunable bulbs today; yes, LIFX finally has some competition.

The LB130 feels heavy, but it’s compact enough to fit easily into any typical fixture. Setup is quite simple. As with the LB120, the LB130 is designed to work with TP-Link’s Kasa smart home management system, which remains a somewhat wonky yet mostly intuitive way to interact with your bulbs. To pair the bulb, you connect to the bulb’s temporary Wi-Fi network, and then use the app to switch it over to your own wireless LAN. The process took two tries in my testing; otherwise, setup was hiccup-free. Both color and white bulbs (and other TP-Link devices, such as smart plugs) can be managed through the Kasa system simultaneously.

No matter how many USB chargers I accumulate, I can never find one to charge my phone before I climb into bed. The LampChamp won’t fix that problem for me because have an atypical bedside lamp, but it might work for you. The LampChamp has a male E27 base on one end, a female E27 socket on the other, and a USB Type A socket on the side that puts out 2.0 amps of power to charge your phone, tablet, or e-reader.

If you have a newer phone or any other device that’s equipped with a USB Type C charging socket, you’ve probably already stopped reading. While it will work with a Type C cable that’s Type A at the other end, it won’t charge your phone as quickly as possible. And you probably have other devices—a tablet or an e-reader, for example—that wind up on your bedside table at night.

We gave the Roost Smart Battery high marks when it came to market late last year. Equipped with a removable Wi-Fi module and a tiny microphone, the battery will send an alert to you and as many “watchers” as you care to designate the instant your smoke detector sounds off. Now Roost has teamed with Universal Security Instruments to manufacture a pair of its own smoke alarms. The company sent its most capable model—the RSA-400—for us to review.

The RSA-400 looks like your ordinary, everyday smoke detector. The included Roost Smart Battery enables it to connect to your Wi-Fi network, and that’s how it sends alerts to your smartphone if the alarm goes off. But the battery provides only backup power; the Roost Smart Smoke Alarm must be hardwired to your electrical system to operate. That’s because it’s a 4-in-1 alarm capable of detecting smoke, carbon monoxide, the flames from a fast-moving fire, and the presence of natural gas. Most of its competition—including the Nest Protect—lack that last feature, but the presence of all four sensors is why it must be hardwired, according to Roost.

Although DIY home security cameras can seem interchangeable, no model is suitable for every need. It’s a fact D-link has capitalized on by offering an array of models, from basic nanny cams to serious surveillance models to weatherproof cameras for outdoor monitoring. It recently expanded its offerings with the DCS-5030L HD Pan & Tilt Wi-Fi Camera, aimed at users with big rooms or active kids and pets to keep an eye on. It’s not the most attractive camera we’ve seen, but what it lacks on looks it makes up for in features.

What you get

With its bulky dome shape, circle of lights, and prominent antenna, the DCS-5030L resembles something out of a 1950s space-art poster. Its wide base allows you to set it on any flat surface without worrying it will tip over. You can also give it a more permanent spot on your ceiling with the included mounting bracket. In either case, it’s going to be pretty conspicuous; this isn’t a camera that blends easily with home decor.

Everyone from the EPA to the American Lung Association has stressed the importance of indoor air quality. Indoor pollutants don’t just impact personal comfort, they can often cause or exacerbate health conditions. Some researchers have even called for greater effort to monitor indoor air.

Fortuitous, then, that Neatmo has released the Healthy Home Coach ($100). This device monitors your indoor climate in real time to help you create the optimum environment whether you have particular health requirements, such as allergies or asthma, or just want greater comfort.

LIFX was our runaway favorite bulb in 2015, and the company has hardly been resting on its laurels in the year and a half since. Today’s LIFX bulbs are smaller, cheaper, and brighter, but are just as easy to install and use as the earlier ones.

My biggest complaint last year was the gargantuan size of LIFX bulbs, which positively dwarfed other bulbs in its category—to the point where they were difficult to install into a standard lamp. This new LIFX bulb has the same shape but is 2mm thinner and a critical 20mm shorter than the original LIFX bulb, and it weighs nearly 2 ounces less. These are all significant and immediately noticeable when you’re working with the bulb hardware.

A mood light in every sense of the word, the Elgato Avea is a party bulb through and through. In fact, its approach doesn’t even pay lip service to utility—it’s here for fun, and it refuses to apologize for that.

The bulb sets up easily, using an integrated Bluetooth pairing system like the Flux Bluetooth bulb to quickly associate itself with your phone. Multiple bulbs can be quickly paired, and all will coordinate to work in sequence.

Christopher Null

If the Elgato Avea is controlled by a conventional dimmer, there will be a slight delay before it turns on, and it won't dim at all (but if you set the dimmer low enough, it will flash off and on). It will flash off and on constantly if controlled by a Z-Wave dimmer.

Osram recently spun off its lamps division, branding it Ledvance. But little seems to have changed when it comes to the Lightify LED bulb product line, which has a diversity that looks a lot like it did last year. (Ledvance comes close to Philips in terms of its variety of smart LED form factors, offering indoor strips, landscape lighting, PAR, and candelabra.) The one big twist: The company has added a full-color tunable bulb to its lineup to complement the white-only bulb we reviewed last year. Firmware updates have also taught older products a few new tricks.

Ledvance Lightify bulbs are built to closely mimic standard incandescents in appearance, and they’re designed to work with the Lightify Gateway. The gateway is a small ZigBee device that plugs into any wall socket near where you have the bulbs installed, easily bridging the gap between lighting and your smartphone. It remains a far more elegant solution than the wired Philips Bridge, and Lightify now also works with most of the major smart-home hubs, including Wink, SmartThings, HomeKit, and Amazon Echo.

Flux is a budget bulb provider, and it actually has two different types of bulbs available, both color tunable. Reviewed here is the second generation of the Flux Bluetooth, a squat and somewhat weird-looking bulb with a black, opaque base that uses a Bluetooth 4.0 connection to link directly to your smart phone, no hub required. A Wi-Fi version of the bulb, along with some other novelty bulbs (including “vintage” A19 and ST21/ST64 styles with visible LED “filaments”) are also available.

Bluetooth bulbs represent the easiest setup of any smart bulb variety, and the Flux is no exception. You don’t even need to pair the bulb through your smartphone OS. Once you download the Flux app, it handles the pairing process for you.

Arguably no company has done more to push forward the world of smart LEDs than Philips. Its latest bulb, the Hue White and Color Ambiance, is evidence as to why the company has been a major player in this space since day one.

The bulbs have changed little in design since then. These latest ones—released at the end of August—are still shaped like a rounded-off tornado, but they now feature a white heatsink/base instead of a silver one. On the whole, the bulb remains quite demure in comparison to the competition. As a ZigBee solution, the bulbs are designed to work with a bridge that connects to your Wi-Fi router via an ethernet cable.

The Philips Bridge, which is smaller and more streamlined than the prior model, costs $60, but it’s included—along with three bulbs—in the $200 kit reviewed here become a standard in its own right and is now compatible with Lightify and GE bulbs. (The latter isn’t represented in this roundup because they only have white LED smart bulbs.) Hue lights also work with Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant (and its Echo, Tap, and Echo Dot hardware), Apple’s HomeKit platform, and a number of other smart-home products.

The latest generation of ilumi’s Smartbulb has a considerably updated look that is now reminiscent of a high-tech ice cream cone, but its core technology remains largely the same. Most notably, the bulb still uses a Bluetooth connection to pair with your phone, and it’s still rated for 800 lumens (by far the brightest Bluetooth bulb of those we’ve seen lately).

What ilumi has done is taken steps to update its app, and in fact it’s in the process of beta-testing a new control app that is due to be formally released in November. Users today can use both the existing app and the new one (listed as “new ilumi” on the App Store) to control their bulbs, switching between the two at will.

SpotCam is a relatively recent entrant in the DIY security sweepstakes, offering a trio of HD (720p) indoor and outdoor cameras. The $160 SpotCam HD Eva looks to muscle in—perhaps literally, given its bulky body—on the crowded Dropcam/Nestcam space with attractive features such as 24-hour continuous recording and motorized pan/tilt. A few peccadilloes, however, keep it from the top tier.

You can forget about hiding the SpotCam HD Eva in plain sight—there’s nothing inconspicuous about this camera; it’s easily the bulkiest we’ve reviewed so far. The head unit is bigger than a tennis ball—which is typically the largest comparative size we see on DIY security cams—and the base is nearly as big. In fact, it almost looks as if they stacked two of the same cone-shaped modules one on top of the other.

Nest Cam is one of our favorite home security cameras, so we were understandably excited to try out the new Nest Cam Outdoor. With a weatherized design and an updated app, it promises to bring the same solid security features and ease of use to the exterior of your home.

What you get

“Outdoor camera” usually conjures images of the CCTV-type bullet cams so prevalent in strip malls and other places of business. Their conspicuous designs scream “surveillance” and probably aren’t the kind of thing you want marring the aesthetics of your home. And if the looks don’t deter you, then the prospect of having to drill through the walls of your home to route several cables to your router and an electrical outlet probably will.

Far too many LED bulbs choke when it comes it comes to being paired with a dimmer switch. The problem can be particularly acute when you pair an LED with a smart dimmer. The bulbs I’ve tested—including those advertised as being dimmer compatible—typically sputter, buzz, hum, or fail to work altogether when I install them in a fixture controlled by one of my in-wall Z-Wave dimmers. I was beginning to wonder if I’d need to replace my smart lighting controls with dumb switches as I change over from incandescent to LED lighting when Cree told me they were about to ship a whole line of new LED bulbs that work perfectly with dimmers.

I should qualify that statement to say that Cree has so far provided only a multi-pack of its A19, 60-watt-equivalent bulbs. The company has promised to send a few representative samples of the rest of its new soup-to-nuts line, which Cree’s VP of marketing, consumer products Al Safarikas characterizes as “from A to PAR.”

Most people settle for a sound bar when they want something better than the pipsqueak sound their TV’s speakers put out. And since most sound bars have limited abilities when it comes to bass response, a big percentage of those folks buy one that’s pre-paired with a wireless subwoofer. But when it comes to delivering true surround sound, only the most-expensive sound bars can compete with a 5.1-channel speaker system driven by an A/V receiver.

But many people are allergic to all the boxes and wires that such systems entail, especially when you need to drag speaker cable from one end of the room to the other to connect the surround channels.

Enlave Audio’s CineHome HD simplifies things somewhat. I say somewhat because all six of its components are tethered to a power source (the sub uses an in-line brick and the other speakers rely on wall warts).